Check if twitter username exists

Question

Is there a way to check if a twitter username exists? Without being authenticated with OAuth or the twitter basic authentication?

Answer 1

Here is how it works on PHP :

$user_infos = 'http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show.xml?screen_name='.$username;

if (!@fopen($user_infos, 'r'))
{
return false;
}
return true;